Charles H. Brand

Charles Hillyer Brand (April 20, 1861 – May 17, 1933) was an American politician, businessman, jurist and lawyer.

Brand was the solicitor general of the western district of Georgia from 1896 through 1904 and succeeded Richard B. Russell, Sr. as the judge of the state superior court in 1906.

On June 27, 1911, a Walton County mob of several hundred unmasked white men lynched two Black men named Tom Allen and Joe Watts after a local white judge—Charles H. Brand—refused to allow state guardsmen to be present to prevent mob action.

Three months earlier, in Judge Brand’s hometown of Lawrenceville in Gwinnett County, he had also refused the assistance of state troops to protect a Black man named Charles Hale, who, left without the protection of those troops, was taken by a white mob and lynched.

He died in Athens while still in office and was buried in Shadow Lawn Cemetery in Lawrenceville, Georgia.